Rinse and Repeat

I wasn’t kidding when I said draw it again and again and again. It’s Herakles and the Centaur! Again!

Young Michael brought up an interesting point in the comments on the last Herk post… About us being taught to show the MIDDLE of the action while we were in school. A lot of emphasis was put on things like the line of action and the follow-through. That is, making it very clear where the action is about to take place. A good example of this that comes to mind in Renaissance art is the Ferryman of the dead in the bottom right corner of Michelangelo’s Last Judgement in the Sisteen Chapel. The creepy old dude is in the middle of swinging his oar at the souls he’s about to take to Hell. Pretty gnarly. It looks like he could finish the swing at any moment… FOLLOW THROUGH, if you will. Which is evidently what I look for. Anyway, I suppose what it comes down to is that one can never help one’s training. All those Norrellite sympathies popping up, y’know?

It also brings up a good point about other cases of pre-action depictions of this sort of thing (I guess it really does help being in Italy when talking about this)… FOR EXAMPLE: Both Michelangelo’s and Bernini’s statue of David show him BEFORE facing Goliath. In Michelangelo’s, he’s contemplating the task ahead, and in Bernini’s, he’s pulled his sling taught and is about to launch the stone. Quite a contrast to a large number of other depictions of David and Goliath, both in painting and in sculpture, where David is shown with the severed head of the already defeated giant. Interesting stuff, folks… Gets those rusty ol’ wheels turning, eh?

It looks all little and cute here, like a paper weight!

Another from the same angle. Different day, different ink, and a bit of a different approach.

There’s that death grip.

It’s very disorienting to draw an upside-down head.

Here’s the first time I drew it from this particular angle. You can see the skin of the Nemean Lion really well from here.

Can you imagine the strongest guy in the world bending your head back like that? Not that you could stop him, but would you even be able to put up a fight?

Lookit that handsome determination and them purdy little fingers! No, wait, don’t lookit them fingers, that’s a different statue.

There are just so many lions.

I could (and probly will… and probly should) do a whole ranting post about flayed animal skins in sculpture. It’s so rad! Remember, the Nemean Lion was unstoppable before Herk came along. HEY! Patroclus, get yer upside-down face outta there!